Stanley's store at the end of our alley
Had a dead end sign shaped like a diamond
Set into the ground at the back of the curb
Turned up on a point,
One of its kind left in the world.
Euclid Avenue ran into it.
Eighty-fourth Place crossed it.
Tootie-Fruitie Freddie and Ricky Cooke
Pitched pennies on the sidewalk behind it.
I raced Kenny Knottingham
In a race I regarded
As the race of my life
From the blotched beige bark
Of the big leaf sycamore
Peeling
To within a tag-hand's reach of winning
Rattling the buttons of glass
That covered the sign
As I fell to the ground --
A hand on the curb,
A hand in the mud.
My face scraped by the pipe
That supported that sign.
It was the race of my life
Lost boarded up abandoned
Block by block purchased and sold.
And try as I may not to
I run it again and again.
Sometimes in my dreams.
Sometimes while sipping coffee in North Shore cafes
Or on the Gold Coast
When the autumn dusk drops its lavender air
And the electric lights in the buildings
Square themselves double on the damp streets
Making the people I do not know
Weave in and out of the mist
To become the people I forgot to keep with me
Walking out of my mind
Into places that will never be again.
Stanley's store at the end our alley.
A pane of glass framing another world.
A dead end sign.
And I race backwards
Never able to win.
Had a dead end sign shaped like a diamond
Set into the ground at the back of the curb
Turned up on a point,
One of its kind left in the world.
Euclid Avenue ran into it.
Eighty-fourth Place crossed it.
Tootie-Fruitie Freddie and Ricky Cooke
Pitched pennies on the sidewalk behind it.
I raced Kenny Knottingham
In a race I regarded
As the race of my life
From the blotched beige bark
Of the big leaf sycamore
Peeling
To within a tag-hand's reach of winning
Rattling the buttons of glass
That covered the sign
As I fell to the ground --
A hand on the curb,
A hand in the mud.
My face scraped by the pipe
That supported that sign.
It was the race of my life
Lost boarded up abandoned
Block by block purchased and sold.
And try as I may not to
I run it again and again.
Sometimes in my dreams.
Sometimes while sipping coffee in North Shore cafes
Or on the Gold Coast
When the autumn dusk drops its lavender air
And the electric lights in the buildings
Square themselves double on the damp streets
Making the people I do not know
Weave in and out of the mist
To become the people I forgot to keep with me
Walking out of my mind
Into places that will never be again.
Stanley's store at the end our alley.
A pane of glass framing another world.
A dead end sign.
And I race backwards
Never able to win.